James Lipton Reveals His Past as a Parisian Pimp: “It was a great year of my life”

James Lipton, the long-time host of Inside the Actors Studio,has revealed the details of his past as a pimp in 1950s Paris to Parade.

You read that correctly.

Lipton, who actually looks pretty good for 86, proves that pimping really ain’t easy when he points out that before he got involved in the world’s oldest profession he had to be approved by a friendly prostitute. He says, “I had to be okayed by the underworld, otherwise they would’ve found me floating in the Seine.”

He goes on to describe his business in his usual elaborate style, explaining, “It was only a few years after the war. Paris was different then, still poor. Men couldn’t get jobs and, in the male chauvinist Paris of that time, the women couldn’t get work at all. It was perfectly respectable for them to go into le milieu. The great bordellos were still flourishing in those days … I did a roaring business.”

However, Lipton makes it clear that his kind of pimping in the old days was kinder and gentler than what can lead to serious jail time today. He says, “The French mecs didn’t exploit women. They represented them, like agents. And they took a cut. That’s how I lived. I was going through my rites of passage, no question about it. It was a great year of my life.”

Well, I wonder if this gives us his own answers to two of Lipton’s famous 10 questions, “What turns you on?” and “What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?”